Jason Gray: American Morass

Few things are better engineered for change, while simultaneously resistant to it, than American culture. Nearly 250 years into this unique, democratic experiment and we still struggle to define some of our nation’s founding principles. Our “more perfect Union,” with justice, tranquility and general welfare, among its cited reasons for being, appears ever the less perfectible with each news cycle—and the symptoms of our confoundedness are not new. They have existed for the lenses of every generation of photographer.

Nearly 70 years ago, a Swiss photographer travelled the United States, absorbing our idiosyncrasies and flaws, and changed the image we see reflected in the mirror. No doubt, The Americans was a defining publication, though the fault lines it placed in full view are all still there, just patched over, or in some cases, filled in (the purpose is pageantry).

I am no Robert Frank, but I am a photographer. And I choose, with this publication, to use my lens like a light; not as a navigatory tool (after all, who really knows the way out?), but to draw attention to the America that I’ve seen and the Americans that I’ve met—all representations of some side of our current, collective experience. All reflections of imperfectibility as equally as they are portrayals of why perfectibility is sought. “We the People” of gradual progress, united even while divided. “We the People” of the American Morass.